Housecalls – Part 3: What Was Left Behind

You may read Part 2 HERE.

I told Helen Matthews I’d call her back.

Then I sat on the edge of my bed for a full ten minutes, staring at the rain streaking down my window, trying to remember if I’d ever left anything in that attic. I was certain I hadn’t. When we moved out, my mother had been methodical to the point of obsession …. every drawer emptied, every shelf cleared, every corner accounted for. She’d treated the whole process like an evacuation.

So whose box was it?

I called Helen back and asked her to describe it. She put me on hold for a moment, and I heard footsteps, a door, the creak of what I assumed was the attic stairs. When she came back, she was slightly breathless.

“It’s a shoebox,” she said. “Old, brown, with a rubber band around it. And your name is written on the top in black marker. Becca. Just the one name.”

“Can you tell me anything else about it? Is there a date, or……”

“There’s something else written underneath your name,” she said, hesitating slightly. “It says ‘Don’t open. For when you’re ready’.”

I didn’t sleep well that night.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

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I spent two days talking myself out of calling Jeff.

It was ridiculous, I knew. He was a doctor, not a private investigator. The box had nothing to do with him. I could simply drive back to Saunders Drive on a weekend, collect it from Helen, and that would be that. Clean. Sensible. Adult.

But the truth was, the box wasn’t the only reason I wanted to call him.

On the third day, I picked up my phone and typed: Strange thing happened. Helen Matthews called me …. from the old house. Apparently there’s a box in the attic with my name on it.

I watched the three dots appear almost immediately.

What kind of box?

A shoebox. Sealed. Someone wrote “Don’t open. For when you’re ready” on the lid.

A longer pause this time.

That’s not nothing, Becca.

I know.

Are you going back to get it?

I stared at the question for a moment. My thumbs hovered.

I think so. I just keep wondering who left it there. My mother never mentioned anything.

Have you asked her?

I hadn’t. And the reason I hadn’t was the same reason I’d been circling the edges of this whole thing for three days without stepping in …. because asking my mother meant opening a different kind of box entirely. She’d moved to Florida six years ago, remarried, and redecorated her life with the same thoroughness she’d once packed up our house. The past wasn’t a place she liked to visit.

It’s complicated, I typed back.

Most things worth understanding are, he replied.

Then, after a moment: Let me know what you decide. I mean it.

I set the phone down and looked around my apartment …. at the neutral walls, the generic artwork, the life I’d assembled piece by piece after leaving a place I thought I’d outgrown. And I thought about a shoebox sitting in an attic on Saunders Drive with my name on it, waiting for me to be ready.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

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I called my mother on a Sunday morning, when I knew she’d be in a good mood …. after her second coffee, before her afternoon plans.

“Becca!” Her voice was warm and immediate. “What a nice surprise.”

We talked for a while about nothing. Her garden. My work. The weather in Florida versus the weather in the city. I let her lead, the way I always did, waiting for the right moment to slide in the question sideways.

“Mom,” I said finally, “do you remember if we left anything behind at the house? When we moved?”

A beat of silence. Brief, but there.

“No, honey. You know how careful I was about all of that.”

“Helen Matthews found a shoebox in the attic. With my name on it.”

Another pause, longer this time. I heard her set something down …. her coffee cup, I imagined …. on the kitchen counter.

“A shoebox,” she repeated.

“She said someone wrote ‘Don’t open. For when you’re ready’ on the lid.”

The silence that followed was the kind that has texture to it. The kind that means someone is deciding something.

“Mom.”

“It was your father’s,” she said quietly.

I felt the word move through me like cold water.

“He left it before he went into the hospital for the last time,” she continued, her voice carefully measured.“He asked me to put it somewhere safe, somewhere you might find it when you were older. He didn’t want you to have it when you were fifteen. He thought…..” She paused. “He thought it might be too much.”

“And you just left it there? When we moved?”

“I didn’t know what to do with it, Becca.” Her voice had a fragile edge to it now, something I didn’t often hear. “I wasn’t ready either.”

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

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I booked a train ticket that same afternoon.

I texted Jeff that evening: I’m coming back next Saturday. My father left that box for me. I didn’t know.

His reply came slowly this time, as though he was choosing the words with care.

I’m sorry, Becca. That’s a lot to sit with.

It is, I wrote. But I think I’m finally ready.

Then, because it was the truth and I was tired of talking myself out of truths: I’d like to see you, if that’s okay. Not just for the box.

Three dots. Then they disappeared. Then they came back.

I was hoping you’d say that. I’ll be around all weekend.

You sure? I don’t want to pull you away from anything important.

His response came quickly this time, and even through a phone screen I could feel the warmth of it.

Becca. I make housecalls, remember? But this time, you can come to me.

I smiled at my phone like a fool, alone in my apartment on a Sunday evening with the rain finally stopped and the city lights just beginning to come on outside my window.

For the first time in a long time, Saturday couldn’t come soon enough.

End of Part 3. You may read Part 2 HERE.

NAR©2026

This is “Family Tree” by Kings of Leon

Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. If there’s something you would like to use, ask me; if I think it’s appropriate, I will usually agree. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.